The Last Passenger

“The train is about to depart. Please keep your belongings with you at all times.”

Roland dropped heavily into an empty bench seat just inside the sliding doors. His aching feet protested the past half-hour he had spent standing and waiting for the midnight train. Though the seat was hard plastic topped with a thin layer of cheap padding, it might as well have been memory foam for as good as it felt.

His bruised feet pulsed, his knees ached, his stomach pinched with hunger, and his head pounded its ever-present ache. His wallet was as empty as his stomach, and his spine ached from the weight on his shoulders.

He hardly noticed the aches and pains anymore, the discomfort so normal to him that he couldn’t remember what it was to not be in pain. And now there was another one to add to the list. His chest had begun to hurt that morning, and he was sure he would have a bruise tonight from how often he’d rubbed at it as if that would make the pain go away.

Roland exhaled as he slumped into the seat, his head thumping back against a window. He gazed without seeing across the aisle and out the window as the train pulled away from the station. A second later, the sprawling city lay before him. Yellow lights twinkled from windows both near and far. The moon fought through heavy cloud cover to make an appearance. He’d found the sight awe-inspiring at one point. The lights reminded him of twinkling stars, each representing the opportunities the city had to offer him. Now, it just looked like light pollution. 

An insistent tapping caught Roland’s attention, and he rolled his head against the window to glance to his right. At the far end of the bench was another man. He’d learned long ago not to make eye contact with certain individuals, especially on the late train, but he found it hard to care on this particular night. The man’s leg bounced, causing the heel of his worn leather boot to strike a loose floor panel. One of his hands scratched absent-mindedly at his arm while he gnawed on the thumbnail of the other hand. His eyes were wide, blood shot, and dilated. Roland wondered just how many drugs the man had coursing through his veins.

Rolling his head to his left, he took in the only other two passengers in the cabin. An elderly woman sat forward and across from him. Her graying hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her purse sat open on her side. She stared fondly at a stack of photographs as she shuffled through them.

Across from the grandmother sat a younger woman, perhaps in her late twenties. She wore a simple pant-suit attire, and her long red-brown hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. Another corporate worker, perhaps? She clutched her purse and eyed the other passengers suspiciously. She glanced around quickly, seeming confused, before resuming scowling at him.

Roland returned his gaze to the window across from him and slumped a little lower in the seat. He was probably too old to sit so lazily, but he again found it hard to care. When was the last time he cared about anything? He wasn’t sure.

The train pitched into darkness as they entered a tunnel. He closed his eyes and considered letting the rocking of the train loll him into a deep sleep. Just as his mind wandered into that odd space between wakefulness and fantasy, his eyes snapped open.

There were no tunnels on this route.

Light flooded the train as they exited the darkness. Roland sat up in his seat, staring wide-eyed out the window across the aisle.

Rolling green hills passed by, broken by an occasional farmhouse and trees. In the distance sprawled a lake surrounded by a quaint town. Only a few clouds dotted the otherwise clear blue sky.

It had been a long time since he had dreamed of home.

Even from a distance, Roland recognized every house and could name every street. He could recall exactly how cool and refreshing the lake water was during the hot summer months. 

Although the hills closest to the train sped past, the lake and its small town remained frozen in time. It would have seemed an odd phenomenon had this been anything but a dream.

The train plunged into darkness once again. When they emerged from the tunnel, a different scene was reflected through the window. Instead of a sprawling landscape, the window showed the point of view from someone’s eyes. 

Children ran in small crowds across a yard littered with toys, swing sets, a jungle gym, and a small cement pad with a single basketball hoop. The scene looked familiar, but he couldn’t place from where. Whoever the vision belonged to glanced down at a picture book in their lap. A shadow fell across the page, and they looked up.

A girl, no older than five, stood over them, smiling wide. Her long black hair was pulled into pigtails, and she was missing one of her front teeth. Dark freckles littered her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her bright green eyes shone with child-like innocence and excitement.

Molly?

Darkness. Another tunnel. Then light.

He watched through someone else’s eyes yet again as they navigated through a crowded hallway. High school-aged teens weaved between groups and chatted loudly, but the stranger’s focus was on a single girl leaning casually against the lockers.

Red curls, crop-top shirt, mini-skirt, glossy lips… Roland’s stomach lurched as familiarity struck him. Shari?

He already knew what was going to happen next. It wasn’t a stranger’s point of view but his own memories. He watched as his younger self approached the most popular girl in school and did something so bold that it elicited gasps from those near enough to overhear.

He asked her to prom.

Another tunnel, this one shorter than the last.

He ran down the old boards of the pier, his feet threatening to slip on the age-worn wood. Laughing, he reached the edge of the dock and leaped. Just before he hit the water’s cool surface, he turned and saw her jumping alongside him. Her black hair fanned behind her, wild and free. Just like them.

As he plunged into the familiar waters, the train again went dark.

Music filled the cabin before the light did. He stood arm in arm with Shari as they swayed softly on the dance floor, which was just the high school gym with strobe lights, streamers hanging from the ceiling, and tables set along the perimeter holding snacks and drinks.

Shari was beautiful. Her dress looked like the night sky; black silk covered in thousands of shimmering beads that reflected the dimmed lights from above. Her red curls were tamed and pulled into an ornate bun. She returned his smile and leaned forward to rest her head on his shoulder.

Darkness.

Sobbing.

His mother sat beside him at the dining room table, rubbing his back reassuringly. He still wore the tuxedo he’d saved two month’s worth of allowance to rent for prom, though the white cuffs were stained with his tears. Even all these years later, he still remembered the sting of betrayal when he’d found Shari behind the gym with another boy. Todd, to be precise. The football team's star player. He realized now how cliché it all was.

As he listened to himself cry, he remembered the other passengers on the train and glanced around the cabin. The man to his right stared straight ahead at a different window. The glass looked cloudy and distorted to Roland, and he wondered if the man was also reliving his past. The man’s eyes were wide and rimmed with tears. His face was painted with a mixture of dark emotions: remorse, guilt, and self-hatred.

The grandmotherly woman gazed at her own window, tears gently sliding down her weathered cheeks and past her small, fond smile.

The businesswoman stared at the window across from her with a blank expression. As he watched, her eyes widened, and her mouth parted in disbelief. A single tear raced down her cheek to drip from her chin. He wondered what memories she saw.

He lost sight of the woman as the train entered another tunnel.

When the darkness lifted, the heart-broken young man was gone, and back was the carefree boy jumping from the pier into crystal clear waters with his childhood best friend, Molly. She had chopped her silky black hair the day after prom. She looked more boyish than girly, which resulted in relentless teasing from the other girls at school. Roland found it beautiful, wild, and free. Just like her.

Darkness flickered throughout the train, as quick as a blink.

He stared into bright orbs of green flecked with brown. Her eyes were just as wide and nervous as his. He ran a hand through her short locks, which had grown out a few inches, and leaned forward to kiss her. He remembered the trembling of his limbs, the fluttering in his chest, and a nervous pit in his stomach. The kiss was simple and quick, and he’d nearly missed her lips. It had changed his life forever.

Another blink of darkness.

He watched as she moved toward him as if in slow motion. Her hair, now past her shoulders, was curled into lazy waves. The trail of her dress spanned out behind her, the light blue trim matching the bouquet in her hands. A thin white veil covered her face, but it would take more than sheer fabric to dull the vibrancy in her eyes.

She was gorgeous. And she was about to become his wife.

Roland’s throat seized as he relived his wedding, eliciting a sob from him. Was he crying? Lifting his hand, he found his cheeks wet. He wanted to laugh at the show of emotion. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. Not since—

A blink of darkness brought a new memory. A moving truck. Molly consoling his crying mother and promising to visit.

Blink.

A small apartment filled with boxes. Eating pizza on the floor in the kitchen because they still had to buy furniture. They laughed as they clinked the rims of their water bottles together like wine glasses.

Blink.

He was sitting before a computer, pretending to look busy as he struggled to understand the charts and graphs on the screen. He had just started his career and had never felt so lost.

Blink.

Meeting coworkers and their families. Attending work functions. Getting promoted.

Blink.

Her hands waved in the air out of frustration as she stormed out of the room. He picked up his suitcase and headed back to the office. He’d been so sure that she’d see reason eventually. If he didn’t work long hours, he wouldn’t get promoted. He needed the promotion if things were going to get better for them.

Blink.

Two little blue lines stared back at him from the small stick. He glanced up at Molly, who covered her tear-sodden smile with one hand. Her other hand cradled her belly. A thrill ran through him. He jumped to his feet, scooping her into a hug and spinning her around the living room. He couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed so hard, and he swore then and there to make her laugh just as hard at least once a day for the rest of their lives.

They were going to be a family. He was going to be a father.

Roland’s body went rigged as he watched the memory of waltzing with Molly around the kitchen.

“Stop,” he croaked, his throat raw from crying. “No more!” If these were his memories, his dream would quickly turn into a nightmare. And he’d had more than enough nightmares. 

Blink.

Boxes fill the living room of their small suburban house. Molly walks into the room, carrying a small box with one hand, the other resting on her swollen belly. She catches his gaze and smiles. Her eyes are tired but nearly bursting with love and excitement.

“Stop! Wake up!” Roland shouted, standing and stumbling toward the window. He pinched his arm so hard that he drew blood. It hurt. It hurt?

So did his feet. And his aching knees. His stomach pinched with hunger, and the pain in his chest was worse than before. But that would mean…

“This isn’t a dream,” the businesswoman muttered, snapping Roland from his spiraling thoughts. He had forgotten there were other passengers. The woman’s eyes remain locked on her window, her gaze distant. Resigned.

Blink.

This time, everything remains shrouded in darkness except for the window. He can no longer see the other passengers. Just himself, the window, and the empty bench seat behind him.

The sky is clear, the sun just appearing over the tree line. It was a beautiful day, and he had never hated the weather more for it. Molly lay before him, surrounded by elaborately engraved wood and six feet of earth. A small deer of stone stands vigil over the freshly tilled dirt. At the deer’s feet is a tiny fawn, sleeping safely while under her mother's guard.

Hands pat his back as the crowd leaves. He hears words of sorrow and condolences for his loss, but they are just a dull hum in his ears. Hands shaking, he places a small bouquet of blue flowers on his wife and unborn child’s grave.

Birth complications are common, and neither were in pain when they passed. Or so the doctors told him.

Tears and snot run down Roland’s face as he watches himself crumble into nothingness. Now, in darkness, there is no blink between shifting memories, and they come so quickly that they blur together.

He stops working. Stops eating. Stops living. Starts surviving. Day to day. Week to week. His phone rings, and he ignores it. Knocks sound at the door, and he waits until they leave.

He sells the house and moves back into a small one-bedroom apartment. Boxes line the walls of the living room and bedroom, never to be unpacked.

Days turn to weeks, and weeks into months.

Pink eviction notices pile inside the door from being slid underneath.

His mother comes to visit. He doesn’t remember what they talk about—or if they even spoke—but she leaves after cleaning the apartment and placing something on the counter.

He spends days staring at the small picture frame. Molly stands proudly beside a stone sculpture she’d spent months chiseling away at. A deer, standing protectively over a tiny fawn. It was far from a masterpiece, but she had been so proud that he had been unable to resist taking a picture.

If only she had known then how that statue would come to haunt him.

Somehow, he manages to shower and throw out the trash. He finds a job back at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

He works.

And works.

One year passes. Then two. Then five.

His feet feel bruised, his knees ache, his stomach pinches with hunger, and his head pounds. His wallet is as empty as his stomach, and his spine bows from the weight on his shoulders.

The window’s vision shifts, and the memories fade. He looks down from above at a train platform. Though it is nearing midnight, a handful of patrons are still waiting for the next transit.

A man in a corporate suit stands nearest to the track, staring blankly ahead. His face is gaunt, and dark circles form around his eyes. His back is stooped, as though riddled with age, though he is hardly in his forties. Minutes pass, and the man occasionally reaches up to rub at his sternum. Suddenly, he clutches his chest and drops to the ground.

A nearby woman notices and shouts in alarm. A crowd forms around the man’s limp form. Soon, a group of EMTs file onto the platform, clearing the crowd and hovering over the man.

They tear open his shirt and attach a defibrillator. A light flashes, a high-pitched beep sounds, and the man’s body jolts.

Roland gasped as electricity lanced through his body. The hair on his arms rose, his skin tingled, and his chest felt like it might burst. He scrambled to tear open his shirt. Across his chest, a network of thin wisps of light twirled and floated across his skin, sending tiny jolts of lightning forking through his body.

Another shrill beep echoes from the window. The man’s chest heaves, and another shock rips through Roland.

Horror washed over him as he realized the man on the floor… was himself.

If he wasn’t dreaming, did that mean he was dying? Had Molly ridden this same train as she lay dying?

Molly.

If he died, would he see her again?

A warmth filled his chest that had nothing to do with the shocks to his heart. He sat back down in the plastic seat, a profound calm washing over him.

If he saw Molly, would she be with their daughter?

The emergency responders sent another shock through the defibrillator, but Roland hardly felt it. He hardly felt anything at all.

His knees didn’t ache. He felt no hunger. His head felt clear and light.

The scene on the window began to fade as the medics draped a sheet over his prone form. As they covered his face, everything faded into nothing.

Roland smiled.

“I’ll see you soon, Molly.”